What one considers ‘sustainable’ depends on the timeframe one expects to sustain a given practice. On a homestead, perhaps the lifespan of the younger reproducing generation – on a planet, perhaps the lifespan of the dominant resource-exploiting species?

At any rate Earth, as a high concept, has maybe a billion years until the gradual brightening of the Sun renders liquid water impossible here regardless of how much coal we burn.

It’s not really a question of human survival (and we have survived much worse than Covid-19, with medical technology comprising no more than leeches and priestcraft), but if we can’t transcend exploitation to a meaningful post-planetary civilisation, I don’t think we can assume a successor race will eventually give terrestrial life another shot at post-Earth propagation.

Reply to Ben’s comments–Are you saying that we avoid the problem of sustainability by leaving earth behind–since it has a short billion year lifespan. If we can transcend exploitation we can have a meaningful civilization on another planet, but if we can’t deal with exploitation (which is a political problem) it is not likely a successor race (of humans, on earth?) will have the means to leave earth which is our only chance for long(er) term survival as a species? Just trying to parse your last sentence. Oh, for the days of homesteading–or no–maybe that was exploitation of the wilderness. Oh, for the days of hominids?

I walk timidly among intellectual giants! Mariner wrote the post in the context of twenty-first century circumstances. The combination of human aggression and planetary behavior has been a destructive relationship ever since we evolved from the hominids. The classic political-economic theories that have prevailed (capitalism, socialism, etc.) do not accommodate sustainability. Sustainability is yet another unknown phenomenon to add to global warming, artificial intelligence et al.
As to the survival of the species, I defer to Neil deGrasse’s frequent comment that we forget about asteroids, an event with much higher probability than waiting for water to disappear.
Thanks for responding.